Is Hollywood Finally Coming Out of the Closet?

Upon realizing that I'm a social liberal from Los Angeles, nearly every homophobic asshole that I've encountered has proceeded to make some outrageous statement about the supposed inherently gay/liberal nature of what they like to refer to as "Hollywood." These have ranged from the absurd and offensive ("All gay people are actors") to the ridiculously absurd and ridiculously offensive ("Everyone wants to be gay. Being gay is trendy. I mean, just look at Hollywood."). There are so many things wrong with these statements that I don't even know where to begin, but I guess I'll start here:

1. People always use the word "Hollywood" as a synonym for the movie industry. This is wrong, because:

a) the vast majority of people from LA (such as myself) are in no way connected to the movie industry. This is why people who say that everyone in LA is "fake" or "plastic" are also wrong, since they are probably only referring to people in the movie business, who they haven't even met since they've probably never been to LA.

b) Hollywood isn't even the area of LA where the movie studios are located. All the major studios that I can think of are in Burbank, Studio City, and West LA.

2. "Hollywood," more accurately referred to as the movie industry, is not as progressive as conservatives make it out to be (just like how California, with its homophobic laws and Republican Governator, isn't the bastion of liberalism it's frequently portrayed as). While mainstream movies have at times been a very effective medium for addressing social change ("Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" is the first example I can think of), mainstream movies are at heart a money-making effort, and as such will only support social causes that the filmmakers know aren't too controversial.

Which brings me to the focus of this post: the awkward interactions between the Academy Awards and the gay rights movement that have been occurring for the past few years. At the 2005 academy awards, Crash, a film about race relations in Los Angeles, won best picture, beating Brokeback Mountain, a film dealing with homosexuality. Now, this is just my opinion, but I think that Brokeback Mountain was a far better film than Crash. This is probably partly because of the fact that every film junkie I knew had been practically masturbating to Crash before I saw it, so it had been ridiculously overhyped for me, but I also thought that all of its characters were ridiculously stereotyped (some people have argued that this was intentional, but I still think it took away from the overall message of the film) and its takes on race were way too simplistic. I saw this movie when I was in high school and my own views on race were, in retrospect, overly simplistic, but I still thought Crash was too simplistic THEN. In comparison, when I saw Brokeback Mountain I thought that it was groundbreaking, had terrific acting, and that the characters were anything but stereotypical. In my opinion, Brokeback was far more deserving of an Oscar than Crash, and I will admit that I was nothing short of shocked when Crash won best picture. I mean, I at least thought that Good Night and Good Luck had a better chance of winning than Crash.

I don't think it's any kind of stretch to claim that Brokeback was snubbed because "Hollywood" didn't want to openly praise a film dealing with homosexuality. As stated before, movies can be progressive, but only when they can do so while making absurd amounts of money. Brokeback's loss occurred at a time when a conservative ran the country (damn it feels good to say that now) and only one state (not California) had legalized same-sex marriage. If the Academy had allowed Brokeback to win best picture, they would have opened the door for all kinds of homophobic criticism that would have, unfortunately, been listened to by lots of people. And by letting Crash win, they also likely managed to get rid of some criticism from liberals as well. "Yeah, we didn't give the best picture award to a movie about gay people, but we did give it to a movie about race! We're still progressive and open minded!" If you think that I'm just imagining the snub and that Crash was truly a better movie than Brokeback, just consider the fact that Brokeback was nominated for 8 awards, the most out of any movie that year, and while Crash was nominated for six, they both won three awards, as did King Kong, which was only nominated for four, and Memoirs of a Geisha, which was also nominated for six but received terrible reviews. Brokeback was statistically the most likely film to win the most awards, but it tied for first place with three other films, one of which beat it for best picture. It seems that the Academy wanted to recognize Brokeback, but were too afraid to do so.

Fast forward to last weekend. Milk had been talked about as one of the best films of the year, with people praising Sean Penn, Emil Hersch, and Gus Van Sant, and rightly so. Not only did it have a great message, but it was also an incredibly well made film, one of my personal favorites of 2008. And it couldn't have come out (no pun intended) at a better time. Not only was its message of equal rights desperately needed during November of 2008, but all the controversy surrounding Prop 8 in California probably helped it succeed at the box office as well. Because of its message and quality, Milk was nominated for 8 Oscars, just like Brokeback was. And it only won 2. That's one less than Brokeback. This must be a sign that "Hollywood" is regressing, right?

Wrong.

While Milk only won two awards, these wins had more of an impact that any of Brokeback's did. In the acceptance speeches for both awards (best original screenplay and best actor), both recipients explicitly and unapologetically talked about the film's queer themes and how they were especially important today, and received thunderous applause. This is HUGE progress, at least in terms of popular culture. Keith Olbermann noted that this was especially progressive since in 2003, Michael Moore made a political statement against Bush in his acceptance speech and was booed. I think it's especially progressive since the way I remember it (please correct me if I'm wrong), everyone kind of beat around the bush about Brokeback's queer themes during their acceptance speeches in 2006.

I've heard all kinds of explanations as to why people were so much more open this year than in 2006. I've heard some people say it's because liberals are feeling more outspoken about their political views now that Obama is president. I heard one critic say that the applause this year, as opposed to Michael Moore's booing, simply happened because Michael Moore is an asshole that nobody wants to listen to. I, for one, think it's because the "Hollywood" liberals finally realized that they have to take a stand. They played it safe when they had a chance to speak out against homophobia in 2006, and look what happened in 2008. The movie industry seems to finally be realizing that since, like it or not, they have the power to truly influence people's opinions, they can't just be complacent and go with the norm if they actually want to be progressive. I dunno, maybe I'm being too optimistic.

You could refute my claims by saying that, once again, the film dealing with queer themes was snubbed of an Oscar for best picture. I was even thinking along those lines for a little bit, since I've been hearing very mixed things about Slumdog Millionaire, which beat Milk. But I would hesitate to call Milk's loss in the best picture category a snub this time around. For one thing, I've only seen two of the films nominated for best picture this year (the other one being Frost/Nixon, which was surprisingly good. While Sean Penn certainly deserved his Oscar for best actor, I would've been equally happy if Frank Langella had won for his portrayal of Nixon.). So while I liked Milk better than the one other nominated movie I saw, I can't actually say if it was better than The Reader or Slumdog Millionaire (I'm willing to guess that it was better than Benjamin Button). Also, Brokeback's loss was largely considered a snub because the general consensus among movie fans at the time was that it actually WAS the best movie out of the five nominated, and everyone was expecting it to win. That can't be said for Milk. Slumdog was the favorite this year, so I wasn't at all surprised when it won. It seemed that in 2006, everyone thought the best movie was Brokeback, but they didn't want to make a real political statement, so they voted for Crash and made a fake political statement instead. This year, it seems that while people didn't vote for the movie that made the biggest political statement, it wasn't because they were afraid of doing so. To me, that is a huge step forward.